One Moms Quest to Contain the Chaos

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Fight or Flight v. Drop and Give Up

You know the “fight or flight” theory, correct?
When confronted with a dangerous situation (or along those lines), one tends to either FIGHT to protect themselves or RUN LIKE HELL for self-preservation.

I have a new theory: Drop and Give Up.

I’ve told you the story of my brother, The Optimist, when he was trying to learn how to ride a bike.

And more recently my mom, looking at the 10-day weather report before our family vacation, deemed it was “going to be a disaster” because it might thunderstorm one of the days.

Yep, one potential rain storm was going to ruin a week long vacation. I reminded her we would have a refrigerator full of wine and she calmed somewhat.

For those of you that are concerned our vacation was ruined, it was beautiful and sunny EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

Anyways, back to my theory. Lack of optimistic approach to life sort of runs in my family, though is not exhibited by me.

However, it seems we have one in my camp.

It’s not so much Sarah has a pessimistic outlook on life…she just gives up when confronted with any perceived threat. She’ll be going about her day happy as a clam then >bigperceivedthreat!< and down she goes, flat on the ground.

For example:

1. She hears the lawn mower:

2. We are in a public bathroom and Mahlie and I are washing our hands. Mahlie puts her hands under the air hand dryer which makes a pretty loud noise. I look down and Sarah has dropped down onto the ground, prone position, total defeat. And now probably covered in the plague.

3. At the beach she is smiley and laughing, running along the shore. She gets a bit farther away than she should and my friend Daniel goes after her. A wave had just broken and the surf was coming up…she looks at it and yep, you guessed it…instead of running a few steps up out of it’s way, she drops to the ground, decided she already lost her battle with the sea.

4. During vacation my brother loved chasing Sarah, calling her a “big hippopotamus” because she stomps around loudly and wrecks everything in site. So he starts saying, “I’m going to get you!” and she turns to run, but then just stands there, and sort of slouches over, head down…like she’s saying, “I’m not even going to try. He got me.”

So my daring daughter, the one that is nicknamed “the hurricane”, “the tornado”, “the wrecking ball”, “hippopotamus” and “the bruiser”, because she runs through and smashes everything in sight, her theory is to “drop and give up.”

We are going to need to teach some self preservation skills….

Do your kids have any fears? Would love to know my kid isn’t the only one scared of bathroom hand driers!

Well your sister should probably stay out of Natural History museums. My older daughter used to be scared of the automatic flush toilets…now she just uses it as an excuse when she doesn’t flush at home, “but I thought it would do it on it’s own, mommy!”
Thanks for the comment!